a dark water
by thebeatbuddha
Summary: They're sent stumbling back into the wall and his fingers are harsh against the tender skin of her neck. His killing hands. His killing hands wrapped around her throat. Dark thrill curls at the base of her spine. Here she is. At the mercy of a monster. A man without a soul.


**Title**: a dark water

**Summary**: They're sent stumbling back into the wall and his fingers are harsh against the tender skin of her neck. His killing hands. His killing hands wrapped around her throat. Dark thrill curls at the base of her spine. At the mercy of a monster. A man without a soul.

**Pairing: **Tom Riddle Jr x Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger x Others

**Rating**: M for dark themes, substance abuse and sexual content

**Disclaimer**: This story loosely picks up after Voldermort's death and is not epilogue compliant. While not set in an alternate universe, please note that this piece will not be very precise in its handling of previously occurring 'canon' events. I don't own Harry Potter, only the plot is mine.

**Note: **the title is a phrase I have happily borrowed from the very last line in Sylvia Plath's poem entitled _Sheep in Fog _(1963)_._

* * *

_**Prologue **_

.

"Horror and doubt distract

His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir

The hell within him; for within him Hell

He brings,-"

[ John Milton, from _Paradise Lost_, _Book IV, (The Argument) _]

.

"Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom,"

[ T.S. Eliot, _The Hollow Men _]

* * *

It seems bizarre that she should dream of him _after _he's been killed.

During the intense hunt for _his_ horcruxes, over the many months spent on the run, flitting from one safehouse to the other, wondering which moment just might be their last, the nightmares had been Harry and Ron's to share, to endure, to brave. _He _had been in their heads night after night, pulling at their memories and distorting them, rendering each picture darker and bloodier than the one that came before, sending splitting shocks deep into their brains —so much so that they would often wake trembling and without breath, like skittish animals brought to the slaughter.

She would be there with them in the aftermath —rough palm reaching out to rest on Harry's dark mop of hair as if to draw the horror out by her touch alone, or curling into Ron's lean chest with familiar ease until the hammering of his heart seemed to steady out. She would wrap her arms around Ron and rock him to quieter sleep once more, murmuring soft nonsense. She would sit beside Harry outside the tent and wait patiently for his gaze to lift itself from the terrors, to settle on her with renewed strength. She would keep the Dreamless Sleep vials close to her body, she would wear the locket when they couldn't, she would skin the rabbits because they wouldn't and she would stay awake long after the boys shut their eyes to make sure she was _there _when they _needed _her. A necessary sacrifice. Herself, in exchange for them. For which they were _grateful. _

In the slow moments when she was alone, when the two of them seemed to disappear for days on end without word or warning —she would wonder why _he _didn't come to her. The sick, sad part of her would know the answer all too well.

_He _was Voldermort —You-Know-Who, or He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named —a wizard with the greatest monopoly over dark magic, a wizard who had once been a young student at Hogwarts, revered by professors and students alike —much like herself; a man without a soul, a monster without mercy, a tyrant whose body was the very physical manifestation of the terrible things he'd done. And _who _then was she? Not Harry Potter —the Boy Who Lived, marked by evil but fighting against it. Not Ron Weasley —the loyal best friend, struggling to make the world safer. Not even Draco fucking Malfoy —turncoat, no longer a spineless coward but someone with courage. _Who _was she? Hermione Jean Granger. A _mudblood. _

Her arm said as much. And it stung more than she would admit —to know that the most powerful wizard in living history didn't deem her _worthy _enough to fuck with her mind. The sick, sad part of her indeed. _Who _was she? Orphaned, war-ravaged, self-obsessed Hermione Granger, pitying herself because a fucking homicidal maniac didn't want to give her nightmares as she hunted down parts of his soul.

And yet, here _he _is now. As both himself and someone else. As Tom Riddle.

The only version of him known to her has been Voldermort —a noseless abomination with the bloodiest eyes. This person before her is the Tom Riddle in she's only seen in pictures. And they really haven't done him any justice. Not even the animated ones so common across Wizarding Europe. They didn't capture the sharp decline of his jaw or the exact almond-brown shade of his eyes. Nor did they accurately represent the lean slope of his arms or the impressively put together black robes he's dressed in. No camera could reproduce the slight curl of his hair, the exact appearance of its softness. Neither could the machine possibly have apprehended the precise smugness of his beautiful mouth, even when set in a firm unyielding line.

The sky is thrown up with hues of dizzying red and he seems to emerge from an unholy darkness right before her eyes. A distant, dim voice in her head seems to call for movement, wants to urge her into fleeing but her feet remain firmly planted in the vague sea of mist, her eyes never once straying from the approaching figure. The scar on her forearm seems to be burning and she finds herself swallowing nervously the exact way she'd done when she'd come across that troll in the bathroom many years ago.

Air shifts around her, heavy with foreboding and she finds her hand moving —without instruction, without intention —to her hip where she keeps the knife. His forbidding gaze follows the movement with an unsettling curiosity as if he _knows_ and everything seems to slow down —in that exact moment of paralysis, it all _changes_. The sky transforms into the high ceiling of a room she's never been in, grass shifting beneath her feet to become hard ground, sounds sucked up into a blur of green light just as she realizes that this is a function of some very intricate spell-work. She _feels _the Dark Magic sweep in around her like a physical force, its presence harsh and grating against the back of her head, swirling like smoke between her fingers, rising and restless like a breath expelled against the whole of her body. It's _intoxicating. _It's _terrifying. _

Tom Riddle appears once more before her, more than a mere phantom now. The dim, sombre light sets his face half in shadow and she notes the ornate furniture of the room - gilded and polished to perfection, her eyes trailing over the pristine vases hosting white lilies, the heavy velvet curtains unbound before settling on the dark mahogany desk to her left, set with two identical wands and two glasses brimming with..._blood? _

"It's wine," His voice is jarring, laced with a mocking sort of amusement that makes her stomach knot. He sounds young. Real. _Human. _

So he knows what she's thinking. The idea doesn't faze her as much as it should. It seems like a given that the kingpin of blood-supremacy and megalomania should be an accomplished Legilimens. It would be stupid on her part to expect otherwise.

She has braved the loss of her parents, the meteoric rise of her best friends to fame, the genocide that was the Wizarding War, all of which has left her bereft—for fuck's sake, she has braved years of Malfoy's sadism, she has faced Bellatrix bloody Lestrange and even as she's imagined many times how she might finally come face to face with Voldermort, she _knows _she can't be hurt. When the envy had eaten away at her in the weeks before his death, she had been crippled by that sense of greed, that clawing urgency to have the darkness in her mind too.

But right now, with her feet steady on the cold floor and the dark magic hot in the air around her, she is indestructible.

Understanding seems to dawn upon his beautiful face just as it thrums in her blood and his lips curl into an ominous smirk. "You think you can resist me, mudblood." For a moment, she catches Voldermort's ugly face in his. "You think you're _brave_ because you let your friends walk all over you. Because you _wiped _your parents' minds. Because you lay on the floor of Malfoy Manor and _let _Bella carve your arm open."

As quickly as her moment of power arrives, it's gone.

When had he started walking towards her? When had her heart started hammering? When had her palms turned slick with sweat? When had the Magic turned so thick in its threat that she could feel it suffocating her? When had she stepped back? When had she given way to him? When when when when when when when when when -

"You _think _that you _killed _me but I'm…" Another step, another look. "...still…" The edges of his robes brush against her body now. "...here…"

He tilts his head at her in question and the way he's looking at her makes it hard for her to just _breathe_. Is it fear? Is this fear? The hair on the back of her neck rise, her stomach somersaulting as she struggles to keep her composure, struggles to keep her eyes on him, struggles to understand _what _is happening to her. Is it pride that has fixed her to this spot —a prey all but caught by the neck, in the jaws of the predator? Or is it fear? Or—or—or, is it _something else? _

He sees it flicker in her eyes before she can comprehend it and he speaks again, slowly, darkly. "Smart girl," Is that _appreciation_ in his heavy gaze? "You were always smart for a Mudblood, weren't you?" If he notices her flinching at the word, he doesn't pay attention to it. Seems only to step closer, a dark shadow. "You know why I'm here, don't you?"

Her chest hurts —it seems to be _burning_ and her fingers have curled into tight fists. Try as she might, the _accio _will not get the wand to her quickly enough. Riddle is too close, too fast. He smells like smoke and the earth, a momentary distraction from the _real _horror she's uncovered in her mind. Had it always been there? Since the horcrux hunting began? Since she befriended Harry and Ron? Since the very _beginning? _Or had Bella's curse put it in her? Had the war? It's impossible but he looks even more perfect up close. It makes her mouth dry. Her body seems to be exercising a greater betrayal than her own mind.

_Desire. _

"You wanted me," He says so softly she thinks she's imagined it. Her knees feel weak and she's caught between casting the damned _Accio _or just giving in. "You've always wanted me." His eyes are impossibly dark now, their physical proximity making her heart stutter. "And here I am, finally, fulfilling your_ desires_."

Something seems to sink in then, a harsh kind of reckoning and he dips his head such that his lips can brush against the side of her neck. The contact is electric —it makes her nails dig hard into her palm and she grinds her teeth together to keep herself from saying _anything. _Her body is _humming _with the force of the dark magic around them _and _that hot, heavy want gathering swiftly in her, centered between her legs.

"It's your weakness that makes you crave…" He mutters against her throat and she can't remember how it is that her head tipped back as if to give him _more _of herself. Her mind is curiously blank, bereft of warning or reason. "...this power." His hand brands her hip with heat, despite the thin material of her nightshirt separating her skin from his onslaught. "You could never quite fight back. You could only covet what was not yours." His tone is fury and mockery both, staggered warm breath skittering over her neck.

She's trembling. She's not Hermione Granger. She's not she's not she's not she's not she's not she's not Hermione wouldn't Hermione wouldn't —fog lifting, fog lifting, light tunnelling, heart racing —_who is she? _

"You think you can _still _resist me, Granger?" His lips part to press a wet, open-mouthed kiss to her throat and her body comes willing to this altar now, seems to submit entirely to the diabolic nightmare of her own making. He's with her in her mind now, shifting through the panic and the haze, setting her skin alight with his mouth. "This is who you are, this is who you have always been."

He jerks back as if to regard her, a picture of dismantled confusion. Her breaths are coming short and her eyes are wild, the state of her unravelling, coming undone.

"Admit it," He hisses, his fingers digging into her shoulder, sending spirals of desire careening all the way down her small frame. It makes her dizzy just to look at him like this. A part of her. Apart from her. "Admit it and you can _have _me."

She doesn't know how it happens but she nods and then he moves in, a dark shadow that envelops her almost entirely. They're sent stumbling back into the wall and his fingers are harsh against the tender skin of her neck. His killing hands. His killing hands wrapped around her throat. Dark thrill curls at the base of her spine. Here she is. At the mercy of a monster. A man without a soul.

The heat is unbearable, rising, entirely overwhelming —as if she were plunging into a strange kind of fire and his hands are everywhere, palming her breasts through the nightshirt, trailing down the curve of her waist and when he drags his teeth against her pulse point, her hips buck up instinctively against him. He takes a long shuddering breath at that, pressing back against her insistently and fuck, she _can't _tell where she begins and he ends. Who is she? Who is she? _Who is she_?

As if he senses the turmoil, that old doubt rearing its ugly head again, he places his hot mouth just above the neckline of her nightshirt and her fingers find themselves tangled in his hair. As soft as it looked. In response, he shoves an unforgiving hand between them, cupping her intimately just as he speaks between broken breaths,

"_This _is what I'm doing to you. _This _is what you can't have _without _me."

It feels like all of her might spontaneously combust and she gasps when his fingers_ finally_ do find her, slick and wet. There's no easing that ache, no abating that urge to crawl inside his skin and be free from this _longing. _He knows this, he knows this because he knows everything, because he is a part of her and he knows, he knows so he takes only a moment to slip his fingers into her brutally —_exactly _how she wants it. _Exactly _how she wants him. She curses hotly at that pleasurable fullness and her eyes flutter shut just as his mouth makes quick work of her neck, knowing _exactly _which movement of his tongue will yield _what _response. She _feels _that surge of dark magic again as his fingers acquire a disturbingly pleasing rhythm, thumb flicking over that _needy little _part of her that makes see bright bright flashes of white. The smell of smoke. The earth. The hard planes of his body crushed against her. And there is that entirely evil thing there with them, waiting, watching and wanting —the Devil himself.

A chant seems to rise in her head, blood-red and white in its relentless flashes as she feels herself drawing close to the precipice —he's dead, he's here, he's dead, he's here, he's dead, he's here —fuck, his mouth is hot over her nipples, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, alternating between pain and pleasure —he's dead, he's here, he's dead, he's here, he's dead, he's here —she can feel his erection pressing against her thigh, warm and hard and it spurs her on, her hips jerking to meet his fingers —he's dead, he's here, he's dead, he's here, he's dead —climbing, climbing, toes curling, the barest flicker of pain somewhere below her rib, climbing, reaching for, reaching out, her breaths coming hard and fast —who is she who is she who is _she _—TomTomTom_Tompleaseyesyesyesyes_ —the lillies, the lillies and the wine: no, blood blood blood blood, hot gushing blood in her veins, rushing to her cheeks, body quivering, body arched, body body body so much — he's dead, _no _: he's _here_ and —;; —

Hermione wakes up panting.

She feels the heat surging to her cheeks, the shame melding with the disgust just as she becomes horribly aware of the throbbing between her legs. Her eyes flit all over the room as if to make sure that _he _hasn't somehow made it out of her head. Her heart is drumming hard against her chest and night swims in around her, heavy with summer. Her skin is sticky with sweat and her hair tumble over her shoulders in a riotous mess. The sheets lie askew at her feet and her nightshirt feels thick, suffocating, restrictive. Bile rising up her throat. Burning it. She feels the distinct urge to vomit.

What the _fuck. _

She runs a trembling hand over her hot face. Voldermort is dead. She _saw_ him die. She _saw_ him dissipate into tiny little pieces. He's dead. Something from the dream — no, the nightmare —

seems to come back to her.

_I'm still here, _he had said. _I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here _— fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck. It can only mean _one _thing.

Voldermort may be dead but Tom Riddle is _alive._

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**A/N: **Leave a review, tell me what you think. Should there be more?


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